In recent years, oral pharmaceutical formulations formulated in a jelly-like form for the purpose of masking the taste of a drug having an unpleasant taste or making it easier to swallow the drug, i.e., jelly formulations, have received much attention. Known gelling agents used to prepare a jelly formulation include carrageenan, pectin, agar, alginic acid, sodium alginate, gelatin, and xanthan gum (Patent Documents 1, 2, and 3). Among them, pectin is useful for a jelly formulation comprising a drug which is stable under acidic conditions, because it forms a jelly which is stable under acidic conditions by the presence of divalent metal ions such as calcium ions (Patent Documents 4, 5, and 6).
However, conventional jelly formulations comprising pectin have sticky properties (jam-like properties) on their surface. Jelly formulations are provided to patients generally encapsulated in a plastic container, and the jelly formulations having such sticky properties have had a problem in that they do not slide out of the container easily (poor slidability) when being taken out from the container. Because of the poor slidability, there has been a problem in that the formulations are prone to remain in the container and thus the administration of a predetermined amount of drug cannot be performed satisfactorily.    [Patent Document 1] JP 2008-195714 A    [Patent Document 2] JP 2008-260708 A    [Patent Document 3] JP 2006-28028 A    [Patent Document 4] JP 2008-184400 A    [Patent Document 5] JP 2007-238561 A    [Patent Document 6] JP 2005-325081 A